Here are a few more portrait gallery additions to the Gray Scale. And some of them aren’t entirely in B&W, given the realities of commercial publication (and the varying tastes of photographers — color isn’t bad, it’s just different). Mona Kuhn, for example, who says in an interview on Lens Culture that she prefers B&W for its “depth,” despite her current fame as a color portraitist.

Why so much emphasis on B&W portraiture? Mostly because I continue to believe that portraiture is one of B&W’s stronger genres, and that portraiture in general is one of the most-difficult forms of photography — despite its universal appeal, look how many sites and portfolios one can find without a single portrait. Instead we see rocks, we see skyscrapers, we see trees and flowers but portraiture… that’s hard. Even most of the portraits that one does find online tend to be driven more by fashionable stylings rather than portraiture’s implicit promise: that through this image you will touch. It will touch you, and perhaps you will even feel the opposite is true as well. Fashion is a mask — portraiture’s revelation tries to find the unmasked individual.

Why then, should B&W be more compelling? Doesn’t B&W also mask, hiding the true colors in favor of stylized ones? Yes, but it strikes us because the color is rarely what we remember about a person. Instead it’s the curve of the eyes, the particular smile, the form — even for a blue-eyed freckled redhead. Instead of seeing the uneven ruddiness & blemishes, what we see in our mind’s eye: the face. And within that, is where the illusion of human connection can be found.

At times I have pointed a link to just part of a site — of course, the purpose for having the following links in the first place is as an invitation to explore:

• Chris Groenhout

• Herbie Yamaguchi

• D.R. Martin

• Gordo — Gordon Stettinus (to add another [part-time] Minnesotan to the mix)

• Added

  Brooks Ayola runs Brooks Blog

• Added

  John Perkinson of Orbit1

• Added

  Clay Enos & Stefan Ghukfvin — while Clay has since been shooting color since the NY Streetstudio of some years ago, he’s busy just this week setting it up again for a return to NYC.

• Sacha Dean Biyan

• Marko Meuller

• Hiroyuki Ohno has been photographing Japanese twins for several years

• David Weinberg

• Zosia Zija has a popular site, partly for the quality of her work and also her regular presence on international web forums

• Jock Sturges is famed for nude portraits but his simple and clothed children’s portraits, which I cannot find on the web, are among the most beautiful I’ve seen — a pity they’re hard to find (and sadly were placed high and a bit obscurely at Photo San Francisco)

• Manabu Yamanaka

• Donata Wenders

• Gregory Scott

• Abraham Menashe

• Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

• Ken Merfeld

• Peter Adams has photographed photographers

• Richard Phibbs

• Jean-Baptiste Huynh

• Platon is now the official photographer of Hilary Rodham-Clinton

• Ric Savid

• Dick Sanders

• <a href=”http://www.ecva.org/exhibition/light/pages/dalzell.html target=”_blank”>Patricia Dalzell</a> is hard to find on the web. Her portraits of artists, and her description of her process and awareness, is what led me some months ago to Henry Rankin Poore and what I call The AMOT*SL Theory of pictorial composition.

• <a href=”http://www.cheryljacobsphotography.com/ target=”_blank”>Cheryl Jacobs</a> is an APUG regular and one of the few photographers I’ve listed who (apparently?) aren’t actively pursuing gallery shows or publishing deals. She does, however, seem to be doing well in teaching her style of 35mm portraiture around the world.

• Mona Kuhn